Beat Art Studio Boredom with Prompts

I love this post from Cate, the web editor of Cloth Paper Scissors, which is the mixed media sister site of Artist Daily. Enjoy!

Doodles by Robin Olsen, designed by using prompts.

"I'm so bored."

Now there's a lament anyone who's around children is bound to hear. But let's face it: boredom happens in the studio, too.

Maybe you're tired of the same themes and motifs that come out of your head. Or maybe the art is fine, it just lacks spontaneity. Or maybe you just don't know what to do next. That's when I find it handy to work with a list of prompts.

It can be so hard to venture out of your creative comfort zone or to risk putting something down on paper or canvas that might not work out. Prompts help me get over the fear factor. They take the onus off of me and put it on the prompt, as in, "Hey, if it were up to me, I wouldn't doodle over that collage, but I'll give it a try if you say so." (Yes, I talk to my prompts.)

I'm almost always rewarded for taking this spontaneous and playful approach. Even if the experiment is an aesthetic disaster, I always learn something I can use next time.

Artist Robin Olsen offered a terrific list of prompts and advice on how to use them in the September/October 2009 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. She prints up prompts on small pieces of paper, folds them, and tosses them in a basket. She then keeps drawing prompts from the basket and acting on them until the piece she's working on feels complete.

These prompts are not complex or mystical. They can be as simple as "add a new shape" or "make dots on the piece and connect them with wavy lines." But they can have a profound effect on your work.

Here is some of Robin's advice:

• Try doing one small piece from start to finish using prompts. Don't give up too quickly. Some of my favorite elements came from prompts that seemed impossible at first.
• A prompt does not have to be a dominant element in a piece. Think of ways it can be incorporated subtly, using soft colors, sheers, fine lines, or as small background details.
• Customize your list of prompts for how you like to work. You might add mixed-media or embellishment techniques to your list. You can also customize how you use them such as just using one or two prompts to get started or only at the end of a piece to add final embellishments.

Robin walks you through her entire process and offers a page full of prompts in her article "Spontaneous Combustion, Using Prompts to Spark Design." This article, and many other inspiring processes, techniques, artist profiles, and galleries of artwork, are available on the new Cloth Paper Scissors 2009 Collection CD.

Now, I'm off to make a new list of prompts for myself. And if my teen says she's bored this summer, I'll say, "Pick a prompt and let's make art!"

Do you use prompts to spark creativity or evade boredom? Share your favorites in the comments section below.

Source: http://www.artistdaily.com/blogs/artistdaily/archive/2011/11/15/beat-art-studio-boredom-with-prompts.aspx

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Daily Character - High Speed Witch

Daily Character - High Speed Witch, originally uploaded by kevrichter.

Source: http://kevsketch.blogspot.com/2011/07/daily-character-high-speed-witch.html

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Utopian impulses in wood ? Francis Cape and Kevin Strickland

Francis Cape‘s 20 spare poplar benches at Arcadia University Art Gallery imply people sitting together purposely (if not comfortably) maybe in church or while eating a meal in a dining hall. Cape?s benches, all hand-made by the artist in the last two years, are replicas of seating used by the Shakers, Hutterites and 14 other [...]

Source: http://theartblog.org/2011/12/utopian-impulses-in-wood-francis-cape-and-kevin-strickland/

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Jack Black Caricature

Source: http://www.quarehawk.com/blog/2011/08/20/jack-black-caricature/

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Lucky me!

The chance to see eight major paintings by Leonardo da Vinci in one go is an opportunity the artist himself never had, nor any after him. So the National Gallery exhibition is not simply once-in-a-lifetime but, once-in-any-lifetime. So I?m incredibly grateful for my invitation to a private evening opening of the exhibition last night. To see the National Gallery (later) version of the Virgin of the Rocks in the same room as the Louvre (earlier) version of the same subject was fascinating. For the record both me and my friend preferred the earlier painting, shown here.


The paintings were stunning. However, what really made a connection for me across the 500 years between myself and Leonardo were the sketches and drawings. The drawings, with re-stated lines, pin pricks for transferring onto frescoes or traced over and redrawn on the other side of the sheet of paper (like illustrators do now using a lightbox) convey the struggle and thoughts of the artist in a way that the completed paintings can never do.

Source: http://julieoakley.blogspot.com/2011/12/lucky-me.html

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He Was Rejected Over and Over

Camille au métier by Claude Monet, 1875, oil painting.

"My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth." - Claude Monet

It is hard to imagine today that Monet faced tremendous resistance to his work during the early years of his working life. Of course, he was expressing an entirely new form of oil painting, so he might have expected "blowback" from the French art establishment until Impressionism was ultimately accepted. At that time in France, becoming accepted by the formal art establishment at the annual Salon exhibitions meant the difference between professional success and failure, eating or starving.

During the first two decades of his career, Monet had no consistent outlet for his oil paintings. Fortunately for all of us, Monet eventually gained a strong ally in the Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Durand-Ruel supported him by purchasing paintings outright while trying to attract buyers for his revolutionary work from the newly affluent bourgeoisie. This long road to acceptance took many years to travel, but still Monet persisted, never wavering from his commitment to his art in the face of slow or no sales. The official art culture was not welcoming to what he was devoting his life to doing. That message is an all-too-common experience for many artists working today.

We understand that a certain amount of discouragement is inevitable in the process of artistic maturation. In some ways it serves a good purpose, for if we are committed to this life, we will continue to work at it, improving all the time. Competition can be viewed the same way. Playing tennis with a better player makes us play harder. The problem for artists is that the very sensitivity that fuels our creativity can cause us to take these disappointments very hard. Rejections can begin to feel like a general negative consensus on our abilities, our visions or our passions, which seem to invalidate our efforts before we can even get them out there.

Galleries are inundated with materials from artists seeking representation, and some of them do not have enough staff-time to cope with the mountain of submissions, or they may be full, or not able to sell what we do, or simply uninterested. If you are truly an artistic pioneer as Monet was, you probably will need to find a guardian angel with the vision and commitment of a Durand-Ruel.

For most of us, there can be a million reasons for why we sometimes don't fit in. We have all gotten the rejection letters that usually begin something like, "Thank you for your interest in our gallery, but..." I once got a letter from a well-known gallery in Scottsdale that stated, "Your work is very fine and definitely belongs in Scottsdale, just not here!" That gave me a good laugh. Rejection is just part of the life we lead, and the sooner we are able to see it as just that, and no more, the sooner we can accept rejection and get back to painting.

One of our favorite quotes on the subject came from our friend Robert Genn: "It is necessary to put yourself out for rejection, and accept that you will be rejected." On the other side of the coin, Robert Wade said, "Constant acceptance breeds complacency and mediocrity. Rejection breeds determination and ultimate success."

Here's wishing you all ultimate success!

For more perspectives on art, along with step-by-step demonstrations and interviews with well-known artists, be sure to join us on The Artist's Road.

--Ann & John

 

Source: http://www.artistdaily.com/blogs/oilblog/archive/2011/10/25/he-was-rejected-over-and-over.aspx

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One of a series

I've been working on the annual report and accounts for the charity Abbeyfield. The charity is the result of the vision of the inspirational Richard Carr-Gomm. And this year, the incidental images throughout the annual report reflected the theme of companionship and love across the generations. This one was my favourite, because it shows my father enjoying a moment of pulling faces at my son Xavier.

Source: http://julieoakley.blogspot.com/2011/08/one-of-series.html

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Jennifer Levonian?s life stories?hers and ours, on artblog radio

Clashes of contemporary values and tastes permeate the familiar and the imagined in Jennifer Levonian‘s hand-painted stop-action animations. Fuming SUVs belch noxious smoke in a Whole Foods-ish parking lot as inside a naked woman practices yoga among the pumpkins. The engaging clarity of her watercolor images and ideas belie their complexity. We’re reluctant to call [...]

Source: http://theartblog.org/2011/12/jennifer-levonians-life-stories-hers-and-ours-on-artblog-radio/

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Nordic walking in Heartwood Forest, every Friday

A great venue for walking as my One Mile from Home project shows. And Nordic walking is a great way of exercising more than simple walking. I may give it a go myself.

Source: http://julieoakley.blogspot.com/2011/09/nordic-walking-in-heartwood-forest.html

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That Painting Just Said ?Eat Me!?

This being the day after Thanksgiving, we celebrate leftovers in my house—and pretty much all other activities that result in eating. So I thought, why mess with family tradition? I'm devoting today's column to one subject matter I rarely cover in my work: food!

But it isn't just any painting of a donut or orange that catches my eye. (Okay, the paintings of donuts are always going to catch my eye. I can't help it.) But there are a few paintings featuring edibles that have taught me something about still life painting that goes beyond how to present yummy looking noshes.  

Andrew Lattimore succeeds in making this painting not about the food. Instead, as the viewer, I focus on the unfolding narrative and the emotions it evokes in me: feelings of comfort and ease as I imagine the warm cozy kitchen where this morning meal is taking place. It's a moment frozen in time—the steam is still rising from the coffee mug-and that reinforces the immediacy of the scene. 

Morning Croissant by Andrew Lattimore, oil painting, 8 x 10.

Marilyn Minter's massive (this one is 108 x 180 inches) hyper-real paintings are suggestive and carnal, grotesque and strangely abstracted. The painting's shapes, colors, and textural variety—the smushed flesh of the cheek and slick tongue in contrast to the bubbly effervescent look of the Pop Rock candy and watery condensation on the glass—reinforce the nonfigurative quality of the work, so at first glance I'm not sure what I'm looking at. That's a subversive contradiction considering how "of the body" the painting is. And then I start to realize what I'm seeing. Weird! Suggestive! Uncomfortable! But not easily forgotten.

Pop Rocks by Marilyn Minter, enamel on metal, 108 x 180.

What I love about Wayne Thiebaud's paintings is how fanciful they seem and yet how accessible they really are. The artist painted food that you could find at any bakery or grocery store, but it is the ways he arranges and executes his still life set-ups that make them feel somehow larger than life. Rows of little cakes on white platforms—sounds simple enough—and yet bright colors and the subtle tilt of the objects toward the viewer make it almost seem like they are being presented to you as a gift or prize.

Cakes by Wayne Thiebaud, oil painting.

Before your next meal becomes your next art inspiration, take a look at all the non-perishable resources we have at the Artist Daily Store. And do it now because—and this is the first time we've ever done this!—we are offering free shipping on any and all products you buy. You'll get yourself set with inspirations of the non-edible kind for your art making during your holiday season and beyond. Enjoy!

 

Source: http://www.artistdaily.com/blogs/artistdaily/archive/2011/11/25/that-painting-just-said-eat-me.aspx

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Old Town Bar

This is the finished painting of the inside of the Old Town Bar, you can see this and all of my other bar paintings by clicking HERE. I'm currently working on putting together a collection of my bar drawings into a book to be called The Little Gem. more on this one soon.

Source: http://sketchoftheday.blogspot.com/2011/10/old-town-bar_13.html

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The Hour

Sandwiched in between all the reality shows, at last a decent original drama on the BBC. And if you haven't seen it ? no it isn't ?Mad Men? for the UK, granted it is set in the fifties, but personally I'm finding it much more engaging. I think where American dramas lose me is that if a series is successful they won't draw a line under it. More and more series are churned out until you can't remember what you found appealing in the first series. Here we either have no money,no business acumen or greater artistic integrity ? take your pick ? but invariably the audience is left clamouring for more, with nothing forthcoming after one series.

Source: http://julieoakley.blogspot.com/2011/07/hour.html

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Tomasz Maronski

Tomasz Maronski is a Polish fantasy artist who started in traditional media, primarily oil, but after 10 years decided to move to digital painting. Working primarily in Corel Photo-paint, Maronski creates richly textured fantasy landscapes, lush with fantastical forms that seem to take inspiration partly from biological sources and partly from Surrealist masters of textural [...]

Source: http://www.linesandcolors.com/2011/12/07/tomasz-maronski/

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Agnes Martin at Pace

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View from the front door, looking in to the foyer

The impending October blizzard working its way up the coast may force Chelsea galleries to close early, but if not you have until the end of today, October 29, to see Agnes Martin, The 80?s: Grey Paintings at Pace Gallery on 25th Street.

I went to the opening on September 16 and foolishly didn?t take any pictures (the guards seemed somewhat more relaxed than usual). When I went back the following day to see the exhibition with fewer people around, the no-picture policy was firmly back in place. I?ve pulled a few images from the gallery website, which I?d urge you to visit.

Martin?s work has always been subtle, as you know. In these paintings her grays range from very light to very dark. The darkest paintings have their own room, all the better to see them in relation to one another, when the meditative rhythm of her horizontals and the variety of paint application becomes more apparent. Like opening your eyes in the dark, it takes a while for your vision to acclimate; the longer you look, the more you see.

Martin, whose centenary will be celebrated in 2012, has described her work as ?memories of perfection.?  They are also perfection expressed materially.

Three views of the installation from the Pace Gallery website

Above: This vangtage point is from the entrance. The space, especially when there were few people, felt meditative, something I don't normally feel in this venue. I don't think I was alone in this perception, as the sound level was hushed, even when the gallery was relatively full. Some of the work is glazed, which makes the subtleties hard to see.

Below: Continuing counterclockwise, we glimpse the back gallery

Below: A view of the back gallery with the dark gray paintings. While there's a tonal range, there seems to be very little chromatic range in the grays, with a fairly consistent degree of temperature, neither warm nor cool. I wonder if they are simply mixtures of black and white. The surfaces vary, however, from light washes to more assertive applications of paint

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Source: http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2011/10/agnes-martin-at-pace.html

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Rajesh Sawant

Rajesh Sawant is a painter based in the city of Nasik, near the western coast of India. His work is known to Americans primarily through art competitions from RayMar Art and Canvoo, and exposure in magazines like International Artist. Sawant works in acrylic and watercolor. His primary subjects are portraits and townscapes. In both, he [...]

Source: http://www.linesandcolors.com/2011/12/09/rajesh-sawant/

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Dracular

This was a piece of homework I just reworked as a sample. I'm still working on a couple of bar paintings but this was a welcome distraction. I should post some sketches at some point,. what with this being "Sketch of the Day" and all.

Source: http://sketchoftheday.blogspot.com/2011/11/dracular.html

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Jennifer Levonian?s life stories?hers and ours, on artblog radio

Clashes of contemporary values and tastes permeate the familiar and the imagined in Jennifer Levonian‘s hand-painted stop-action animations. Fuming SUVs belch noxious smoke in a Whole Foods-ish parking lot as inside a naked woman practices yoga among the pumpkins. The engaging clarity of her watercolor images and ideas belie their complexity. We’re reluctant to call [...]

Source: http://theartblog.org/2011/12/jennifer-levonians-life-stories-hers-and-ours-on-artblog-radio/

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Easy Children's Art and Drawing Activities

It can be hard to spend quality time with your kids in the leadup to holidays, with preparations keeping grownups busy. Here are some easy drawing activities that can help ...

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Source: http://drawsketch.about.com/b/2011/11/21/easy-childrens-art-and-drawing-activities.htm

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Beale Air Force Base

I almost forgot about this one but I really enjoyed sitting on the runway and drawing this extraordinary aircraft.

Source: http://sketchoftheday.blogspot.com/2011/09/beale-air-force-base_29.html

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Fair Play: The World Wide Web

The posts so far:

Occupy Miami?

Prologue: Head to Toe

Peekin' In.

At Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy, ABMB: Mona Hatoum, Conversation Piece

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"'Will you walk into my parlor?' said the Spider to the Fly.

The first web I saw was Mona Hatoum?s, crystalline and glistening, suspended from brocade-upholstered Queen Anne chairs at Art Basel Miami Beach. I gasped, so contemplative was it set amid the bustle of the fair. So unexpected. Then I saw another of hers, a bed whose springs had been configured into a web, making a shadow on the floor. In short order I saw a Louise Bourgeois spider and a Jim Hodges web attached high in a corner, a big floppy web by Carlos Amorales, and several webby nets made by the aptly named (at least for English) Ernesto Neto.  
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At White Cube, London, ABMB: Mona Hatoum, Webbed III

Detail below

I kept walking and looking. And the more I looked, the more I found. The interesting thing is that most of these webs?and by extension, nets and interlacements?are not necessarily fiber. Hatoum, for instance, used chairs, wire and glass beads for one; steel, rubber and wood for another. There are also webs and nets made of hot glue, bronze or  pipe cleaners. The webs are drawn, printed and photographed. And, yes, some are woven.

This post spun out from what I saw:

At Yvon Lambert, Paris, ABMB: Carlos Amorales, Transformable Spider Web, aluminum tubing and black rubber paint

At Robert Miller, New York, ABMB: Louise Bourgeois, Spider, bronze

At CRG Galery, New York, ABMB: Jim Hodges, Untitled, copper chain

Detail below

At William Baczek, Northampton, Mass., Aqua: Nanny Vonnegut, hand-colored monoprints, above and below

At Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, ABMB: Eduardo Basualdo

At Kudlek Vander Grinten, Cologne, Pulse: Lucie Beppler drawing

Detail below 

At Adler & Conkwright, New York, ABMB: Francois Morellet? wire and wood construction, above and below

At Thatcher Propjects, New York, Pulse: Adam Fowler paper construction

At ABMB, artist and gallery lost to my notes, but too good to not post

At David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, Pulse: Hong Seon Jang,  Black Mirage, hot glue on fishing line

Detail below

At Dan Galerie, Sao Paolo, ABMB: Leon Ferrari

At Kimmerich Gallery, New York, Art Positions section of ABMB:  Alexandra Bircken knitted construction

At Spanierman Modern, Art Miami: Ibram Lassaw, Loom III, bronze (?)

At Diana Lowenstein, Miami, Pulse: Caroline Lathan-Steifel, Cohosh, pipe cleaners

Detail below

At Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, ABMB: El Anatsui hanging sculpture, too big to be photographed in one shot

At Andrew Kreps, New York, ABMB: Roe Etheridge, work appears to be a photograph of knotted net

At Tanya Bonakdar, New York, ABMB: Ernesto Neto sculpture of knotted line over shaped wood

Detail below

At Galeria Fortes Vilaca, Sao Paolo, ABMB: Neto again, with crocheted net pinned to the wall

At Now Contemporary Art, Art Miami: Carolina Ponte crocheted sculpture

At FTC, Berlin, Pulse: Beat Zoderer metal sculpture

At Alida Andersen Art Projects, Washington, D.C., Aqua: Erwin Timmers glass sculpture

At Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles, Pulse: Margie Livingston acrylic sculpture

At Sperone Westwater, New York, ABMB: Emil Lukas thread paintings, below, with detail above

At Bridgette Mayer, Philadelphia, Art Miami: Paul Oberst Cermonial Blanket, steel wire sculpture

Detail below

At D'Amelio Terras, New York, ABMB: Cornelia Parker, nets made from wire drawn from the lead of a bullet

Detail above; view of three works below

At ABMB (gallery unidentified): Daniel Sinsel, Untitled, linen casein and hazelnut shells

Detail above, full view below, app 30 x 20 inches

At ABMB, either Standard, Oslo, or Paula Cooper, New York: Tauba Auerbach, Corner V, woven cotton tape

Detail below

At Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, NADA: Hugh Scott-Douglas slit-fabric painting

Detail below

At Nye+Brown, Los Angeles NADA: Brian Wills, Untitled (Open Cross), oil and thread on panel

Detail below

At Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pulse: Xylor Jane watercolor weave

At Lausberg Contemporary, Dusseldorf and Toronto, Art MIami: Dani Marti bungee cord weaving

Detail below

At Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, ABMB: Orly Genger knitted scupture

At Cain Schulte Gallery, San Francisco, Aqua: Gyongy Laky, Simple Conversation, telephone wire, 13" diameter

At Sikkema Jenkins, New York, ABMB: Sheila Hicks, wrapped linen sculpture

Detail below

At Valenzuela Klenner Galerie, Bogota, Art Nova section of ABMB: Liliana Angulo photograph

Installation view below

Next up: A twist on Ingres and then a walk through the Convention Center

Source: http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2011/12/fair-play-world-wide-web.html

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